Should we be civil toward people on the internet?

[JDHURF]

[Thundertaker]

I know I'm not entirely innocent of using intemperate language on the internets myself (although on those occasions, I've usually been provoked by someone else doing it first) it is kind of a kitty thing to do if you aren't the kind who'd do it to someone's face. Besides, its actually more effective IMHO to use self-discipline and refrain from doing it back, because it makes the guy look like such a dickhead in the eyes of everyone else if it carries on for long enough...

[micfranklin]

I'm generally civil when someone makes an argument that follows logic and reason, as opposed to someone trying to be tough and spout nonsense.

[The Comrade]

yes, unless you're playing a game. sometimes you just need to tell someone to logoff and commit suicide when your'e playing a game.

[Spider]

/ragequit

[The Comrade]

never quit, just rage

[broken robot]

[John Galt]

i recently read about some twitter bots, @StealthMountian, @CapsCop, among others. apparently some people have written programs that scour the twitter posts for certain phrases or punctuation and then automatically respond

in the case of StealthMountain, he will reply to you "I think you mean "sneak peek"." if you use the phrase "sneak peak". whats really funny is that he's sent something like 200k tweets

@CapsCop will send you a message if you twit in all caps

but the point is, trolling has become such a common thing on the internet people are writing programs to automatically troll everyone on the internet.

i have met a few people in my life that went from 0 to 180 in about 3 seconds over nothing. basically most people on the internet act more like that than they do in person because they can, whereas in person you know you must be on better behavior, so you are. you probably think all the same things you actually type anonymously on the internet when speaking to someone in person; you wish in person you could act like it was the internet not the other way around

so to answer the question, on the internet we act how we would act in a perfect world; why would we want to change that

[OGPhilly]

[OGPhilly]